This was my first time actually learning about the Bauhaus. I found the history of this institution, and its transformation throughout the years that it was open, very fascinating. The ideas and techniques that were taught at this school are still used for today in advertisement (the idea of integrating typography into corporate identity and advertising, for example, traveled over from the Bauhaus to the U.S.). The Bauhaus focused on defining and creating art at its simplest forms, not focusing on trying to make it look more “beautiful”.
The comedy sci-fi novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the 1990s documentary “Hyperland”, both stemming from the imagination of late Douglas Adams, predict of creations that have been made, and events that are happening, and have happened, in our world—more than 20 years early, and portrayed accurately. Of course, with the technology that was used back then, visually it’s not the same as it is now; however, the concepts presented are the most important aspects when it comes to what Douglas Adams wrote about in his own media. As I was watching these, I couldn’t help but be surprised and in awe about how these concepts inevitably came to be.
In “Hyperland”, the concept revolves around the idea of a media that allows you to customize an artificial intelligence butler that can show you anything that your heart desires on the world wide web (www). Today, we (unfortunately) don’t have a full-sized butler on our screens that can help navigate us through our browser and our phones. What we do have are faceless assistances (Siri for Apple, and Alexa for Amazon, for example) built into smartphones that can help with menial tasks such as adding an item to a shopping list, or making a call to someone in your contacts. Apple’s Siri also has the ability to customize its voice with different tones and accents, which ties back to the idea of customizing the butler in “Hyperland”.
In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, while the idea of aliens overtaking the world to create a porting station for ships is predictably less accurate to our present world (although, and I say this positively, the idea of aliens in general being out there is not so far-fetched to its designated crowd of people), the idea of having a hand-held device that lets you summon a million pages is, decidedly, more accurate. A lot of smartphones (and even some of the older designed phones have this option as well!) have the capability to search online and open many, many, many tabs that you can save for later and navigate back to. You can open apps on your phone and keep them open until you decide to close them if you have no use for them at that moment (or until you realize that having many apps open all at once is draining your battery too fast). Both media have predicted the future under the guise of a comedy sci-fi novel and a documentary. I’m sure that many people could have predicted all of this happening at the time these were published and shown, but who could have guessed that we, the ones living in it, would be the ones to be surprised by the predictability of Douglas Adams’ work?
